Prof. Robert J. Aumann of the Center for Rationality at Hebrew University of Jerusalem today won the Nobel Prize for Economics for 2005, together with his US colleague, Thomas C. Schelling.

Listen to Nobel Prize announcement

Listen to reaction of Professor Aumann

The theory of repeated games enhances our understanding of the prerequisites for cooperation," wrote the prize committee.

Robert Aumann works at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. He was born in 1930 in Frankfurt, earned his doctorate in mathematics in 1955 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has taught mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem since 1956.
The prize will be awarded on December 10, the birthday of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. The pair will share $1.3 million prize money.

Nobel
Prize announcement

Aumann is the second Israeli to win the Nobel Prize for Economics, Daniel Kahneman was awarded the prize in 2002. Last year the Israeli professors Aaron Ciechanover and Avraham Hershko from the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa) together with Irwin Rose from the University of California won the Nobel Prize for chemistry. Other Israelis who won the prize are Shai Agnon, who won the prize for literature, and Menahem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, who won the Nobel Prize for peace.

In Jerusalem, at a Hebrew University news conference, Professor Aumann said he was delighted to receive the Nobel prize which was also a tribute to his Israeli collegues who have focused on Games Theory. Professor Aumann went on to say: 'In fact, Israel is probably number one in the world today in the field of Games Theory'.